Dear Friends,
The first reading today is from the Book of Job. Job must
have been composed in January or February when our world is bleak! His words
find an echo in our own lives…depression, hopelessness, helplessness.
For a person who has lost a loved one or who has experienced
the breakup of a relationship or who is out of work or has felt the pressure of
being cooped up – anyone in these circumstances can understand Job when he says,
“The long night drags on, I am filled with restlessness.”
Job has lost all. His lament was not so much that his
possessions and children were gone, as that their passing made no sense. He had
done nothing to warrant this suffering. He was a good person, yet he was
suffering apparently unjustly and unfairly.
In the Gospel so much is said in so few words that it is
tempting to think that Jesus has a simple answer for everything. He touches
people, they are cured. Their problems are solved. Did Jesus have the instant
cure for everything? No. Jesus was, at times, almost overwhelmed at the pain
and suffering he saw.
The question won’t leave us alone. Why? Why pain and
suffering, especially when it happens to good people like Job, who are innocent
and faithful. It almost seems as though God is powerless. Why? Why? Maybe the closest we can come to an answer is a story I’ve heard several times.
There is a place where people still bring the sick to Jesus.
I’ve never been there, perhaps you have. The people I’ve talked with tell a
similar if not an identical story. I am speaking of Lourdes in France. It’s
like a biblical scene. The sick, sometimes thousands of them, arrive by every
possible means of conveyance, with hundreds of volunteers to care for them.
Most of them do not receive a cure, but the answer to their prayers, and it is
not a trivial one, is a healing in soul and spirit. They are renewed in faith,
but the faith is not that they continue to expect physical healing. It is rather
a conviction that God is with them. They do not bear the cross alone.
This is the good news, God is with us. It is a truth that is
hard for us to take in, and perhaps even harder for us to explain.
For us, when all ties to the future seem to be cut off, when
our pain and suffering seem overwhelming, it is in these moments when we are
faced with Job’s choice: We can say, as Job’s wife suggested, “curse God and
die” or we can come to God with open hands and heart. Tired, confused, angry as
we may be, we can abandon hopelessness and bind ourselves to a hope that will
sustain us even beyond death.
God promises in the Psalm today:
The Lord heals the brokenhearted. He
binds up their wounds. He sustains the lowly.
We are talking about the One who stands against the dark
forces of life that threaten to overcome us. We do not have to search for Him. He
is among us. He is here. He holds us in his hands. He is our God.
To suffer is to write with our lives what we believe with
our hearts. Our belief is that, though the setbacks in life are many, the victory,
given to Jesus, will ultimately be ours.
~Sister Joan Sobala
